I have sat here this morning uninspired. I wondered was it last night’s wine. And the more wine. It seemed a reasonable assumption to make. Yet I have been wineified on mornings past and it has caused little or no difficulty. Then I realised. It’s the World Cup.
This World Cup is sapping the very life from me with its dull, dreary football, lack of goals and/or incident and the ‘expert’ punditry from expert pundits who are to expert pundits what I am to expert, home made laser eye surgery. Take yesterday’s game between Portugal and Ivory Coast. Seven minutes in and Ronaldo dives getting Zokora booked. There was no contact, just a typical piece of Ronaldo cheating, the ref bought it and the Ivorians were annoyed.
A few moments later Ronaldo is quite crudely chopped down on the edge of the box by former Arsenal man Guy Demel (who was French when he played for us, he’s had a sex change subsequently, you see) and Ronaldo is outraged when the ref waves play on. There’s some vague pushing, Ronaldo is shouting ‘Fuck off! Fuck off!, Demel is giving it the big I am, Kolo Toure’s in there somewhere and it all looks like it’s going to kick off. The ref comes over, books both Demel and Ronaldo and on we go.
And I’m thinking ‘This game could get quite tasty now’. Instead that little bit of fight was the most exciting thing to happen in the whole game. There were no further niggles, neither team looked like they were particularly interested in winning the game, Ivory Coast’s injury time short corner smacked entirely of match fixing, and I’d spent another 90+ minutes of my life on a game of football seriously lacking in quality. It was so bad Paddy Power gave me back the money I’d bet on a 2-2 draw – what was I thinking? Pity all those poor people at the game who only came to see Eboue.
I know opening games are typically tight affairs, nobody wants to lose and all that, but this is unquestionably the worst World Cup I have ever seen. Yes, worse than Italia 90. I’m hoping it will pick up, a couple of lovely Brazilian goals offer a little hint that things might improve, but when most of the conversation about this tournament involves people talking about where they’d like to stick a plastic trumpet you know something’s very wrong indeed.
Hopefully we’ll get better today. Pretty much everyone’s favourite, Spain, are in action for the first time as they take on Switzerland. Word from the Spanish camp is that Cesc will start on the bench, while former Gunner Philippe Senderos could start to face the likes of Villa and Torres. Switzerland also have Hakan Yakin, my favourite name for a footballer ever. He sounds like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon character. Or something you do to make yourself vomit. It’s so multi-functional. Either side of that we’ve got Honduras v Chile and then we’re back to start again as South Africa play Uruguay. Please, someone score some goals.
Back to things Arsenal and Andrei Arshavin talks about Cesc:
As an Arsenal player, I like him a lot and he is our best player. But it is his decision. In modern football everyone goes somewhere and most clubs sell players.
Everyone goes somewhere. It’s that kind of analysis that could get Andrei an ITV pundit’s job when he retires.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail is reporting that Laurent Koscielny has been asking Lorient to sell him to Arsenal. The player’s agent, Jaime L’argent, says:
Laurent told the Lorient president and coach that he wants to move to Arsenal come what may. It is hard to ignore interest from Arsene Wenger. Lorient’s directors want to get over £8.3m from Arsenal.
We have held talks with them, and with a sell-on clause inserted in the deal we are not far off agreement.
I don’t like that picture of him in the Mail though. He looks like he’s on his way over to his brother Damien Duff’s house. All a bit special. Or something. Still, he’s a defender and we need some of them. While Arsene is in South Africa I hope Ivan Gazidis is out with his recyclable shopping bag full of centre-halves. He’s just got to sort them out before we announce them to the world. That must be it.
Right, I’m gearing myself up for another will to live sapping day of World Cup action. Till tomorrow.
